


I am here

by InterstellarVagabond



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23126023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterstellarVagabond/pseuds/InterstellarVagabond
Summary: When Fenris wakes the bed is cold, and Hawke is no longer beside him.Hawke disappearing is never a good sign on the best of days, but the past two weeks or so had been hard on him.For all it’s glamor the Hawke estate was not so big that finding Hawke was difficult. Fenris eventually found him in the library. He was not reading, nor did he appear to be doing anything else. Just sitting by a recently lit fire and staring into the embers.“You chose the room farthest away so as not to wake me,” Fenris guessed, rounding Hawke’s chair and taking a seat in the other nearby.
Relationships: Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 94





	I am here

**Author's Note:**

> we still out here coping by writing about panic whenever we feel it haha

When Fenris wakes the bed is cold, and Hawke is no longer beside him. 

Hawke disappearing is never a good sign on the best of days, but the past two weeks or so had been hard on him. 

For all it’s glamor the Hawke estate was not so big that finding Hawke was difficult. Fenris eventually found him in the library. He was not reading, nor did he appear to be doing anything else. Just sitting by a recently lit fire and staring into the embers. 

“You chose the room farthest away so as not to wake me,” Fenris guessed, rounding Hawke’s chair and taking a seat in the other nearby. 

Hawke seemed so startled by his presence he almost apologized. Instead he felt a sense of unease wash over him. Hawke had once plucked a bolt from Varric’s crossbow out of the air while passed out drooling on an abandoned game of wicked grace. There was no surprising him.

“Yeah, just needed… air,” Hawke lied poorly, and as usual turned it into a joke. “Book air, good for the lungs. They all used to be trees you know, I heard trees make the air… think Varric told me that…”

“I wouldn’t trust a dwarf on his opinion of trees,” Fenris replied, and Hawke forced a chuckle that made Fenris frown. “What is troubling you?”

“Nothing. Book air. Fine.” Hawke waved dismissively. “Go back to bed.”

Fenris made no move to leave, but Hawke also made no further move to make him. 

Instead, he leaned closer to the fire with his arms wrapped around his middle, looking ill. He was sweating, but he kept getting closer to the fire like he was cold. There was something about his eyes that was familiar to Fenris, in a sort of unsettling way. He realized it after a moment.

_ He’s not looking at the fire, his gaze is somewhere I cannot see. _

“Hawke,” he said, more forceful this time, brokering no arguments or dismissals. 

“I had this dream,” Hawke said, almost before Fenris had finished saying his name. “I was coming home, taking off my armor, dead of night. Bodhan wasn’t there at the door talking my ear off as usual. Funniest thing, I went to my mother’s room like I was expecting to talk to her and there she was. Not just her, Carver as well. I just wanted to embrace them for a moment, tell them I loved them. We never did that enough, always so busy fighting…” Hawke shifted a bit in his chair, and Fenris could see his knuckles turning white as he gripped at elbows, wrapping his arms tighter still around himself. “But they were still dead, dead and moving. Mother all stitched up the way that man… butchered her. Carver with his neck broken and dangling. They tried to kill me, you ever notice how everything always tries to kill me?”

“Hawke, you don’t have to joke.” Fenris moved to kneel beside his chair, he felt lost. He was no stranger to a dream stained by the past, but he’d never helped someone through one before. His prefered method was to drink it off or go for a walk until things were clear again. Hawke was a talker though, even when he drank or walked things off he would talk. 

Hawke seemed almost grateful at the dismissal of his joke, and he kept explaining. 

“I had to kill them. I took my sword and I…” the words failed him at last and he put a hand to his face to hide his eyes. 

“I am here,” Fenris told him, just like he had the day it had happened. He didn’t know the right words to say for every occasion the way Hawke did, but he knew how to stand by Hawke even when things were their darkest. He knew how to prop Hawke against his shoulder when he was wounded, how to pull him into his arms to trick him into sleeping, how to hold his hand when it was clear his shield of words was shattering.

Fenris offered his hand and Hawke held it like a lifeline. 

“What if one day you’re not?” he asked, eyes fearful and mourning.

“That day will not come,” Fenris said, shaking his head. “Even if it did, then Varric would be there. If he fell, Isabela. There are too many who are here, you cannot lose them all.”

“Just watch,” Hawke laughed bitterly, wiping at the tears forming in his eyes. “I’m good at losing people.”

“Good at saving them too.”

“Good at pushing them away.”

“Good at making them stay no matter how stubbornly they rather hole themselves away to remain in their loneliness.”

“Ah, you would have been fine,” Hawke said. “Until the wine ran out. Is that why you’re really here? You ran out of bottles to throw at the wall? Are you here for my bottles, Fenris?”

“You are an ass even afraid,” Fenris teased him. “That’s why I’m here.”

Hawke pulled Fenris’s hand up to his face, kissing the palm once before placing it on his cheek. Fenris curved his hand to cup Hawke’s face. 

“If I told you… I feel very much the ass right now?” he asked. 

Fenris put his other hand on Hawke’s chest, feeling the heart that was beating far too fast. 

“I am here,” he reminded him.

They sat like that for awhile, until Hawke finally took a deep shaky breath and stood. He helped Fenris to his feet as well and then ran a hand through his sleep mussed hair. 

“I don’t think I can sleep again tonight,” he said. 

“You will, and must,” Fenris said. “Come.”

He guided Hawke back to the bedroom, the one he had privately begun thinking of as  _ their _ bedroom. He tempted Hawke into sleeping once again by offering his arms, holding him safely as Hawke’s head came to rest on his chest. 

“You’ll be here when I wake up?” Hawke asked, and it was clear he felt foolish asking but he really needed to ask anyway.

“Yes.”

“Good.”


End file.
